The Best He Could Do
by Maybe the Moon
Summary: Ennis goes back to the mountain. Prequel to 'Her Daddy Was.'


He rises with the sun, a habit formed by years of ranch work, and the first thing he does is make coffee, not putting on a light because he don't need to, there's just enough to see by in the kitchen of the small house by the highway. He drinks his coffee on the back porch, watching the sun creep up over mountains that are too far away for his liking and too close for comfort. In winter his breath makes clouds in front of his face; in summer it's already so hot the sweat's running down behind his ears. He drinks his coffee until his eyes are all the way open.

There's no ranch work to be had right now so his days are filled with whatever he can fill them with. He fixes things around the house, broken hinges and a window in the bedroom that don't open. When Junior gets up she throws out his coffee. "It's foul," she says, friendly-like. "I don't know what you do to it Daddy but you make the worst goddamn coffee there ever was."

"Watch your mouth," he says with a crooked grin and a kiss to her forehead. "You don't make it no better."

"I do," she says, and she's right. There's breakfast with his little girl's man, who works oil and has to leave before Junior's even sat down to eat. Then it's just him and her sitting at the rickety table in a rickety kitchen, pushing eggs around on their plates. They don't talk, but he don't think they need to. He reads the newspaper.

Sometimes she'll ask him if he minds going up into town for groceries, which he doesn't. He takes her list and her money and goes, and there's always an extra five in there for a beer or two. The only bar in town smells like old beer and piss but he goes anyway, puts a song on the jukebox, watches folk come and go. The bartender's a friend and sometimes there's something to be fixed, which means free beer and he can take Junior back her five. Most of the time though he just sits, drinks and thinks, until it's time to get the groceries and go home.

Lunchtime comes and goes and he works outside then, out behind the house where he's been trying to get a little garden going for Junior. She likes green things and there's good dirt out here, so he's been planting carrots and cukes and even a few ears of corn. But he thinks he has a black thumb because so far the only thing that grows are weeds. He's building a shed and it's nearly done except for the roof, that has to wait until Curt can get him some shingles. It'll be good when it's done, he thinks, and if the goddamn garden sprouts they'll be just one chicken or two away from a decent little operation here.

Sometimes, he takes the truck up to Lightning Flat. He doesn't go often but often enough. Mr. and Mrs. Twist are old but she still has a smile for him when he pulls up in the driveway, and coffee and some cake. Mr. Twist don't say much but Mrs. Twist talks to him, asks him about his daughters and how work is going. He hasn't told them about the ranch. He don't want no pity, and he don't want Mr. Twist to turn those beady eyes of his on him, disapproving-like, as if he knows something. He don't want Jack's father to look at him the way he knows he always looked at Jack. The temptation to punch those beady eyes shut would be too much to ignore.

If he goes out to Lightning Flat he doesn't get home before dark, but dinner's always waiting for him even then. Curt comes home from work with hands as black as his hair, and Junior don't even let him kiss her hello before he's had himself a wash. "You warsh every part of you," she tells him, "'cause whatever you don't warsh I ain't touchin." Junior is a month pregnant, not even showing yet but the puking's a dead giveaway, and Ennis is excited about being a granddaddy, but all the same, it means his little girl's done the things a woman does and he's not too sure how he feels about that. He looks at her and sees Barbies in little hands instead of a wedding ring.

Dinner is fine, because Junior's a good cook. Curt talks about the fellas at work and tells off-color jokes that he tries not to laugh at. "That ain't right," he tells Curt. "There's a lady here, son."

"I ain't no lady," Junior laughs. "You ain't heard the jokes I tell him!" And she tells him one that makes his ears burn and milk go up in his nose. His little girl.

He sleeps in the extra room that he knows he's going to have to leave once the baby comes. The bed's hard and creaks whenever he moves but he don't mind, he's slept in worst places. He don't have much in the way of belongings, just his daddy's old Bibles and some clothes. He don't let Junior clean in here, does it himself. When he goes to bed he shuts the door and shucks his clothes, lies down and closes his eyes. Sometimes he goes right to sleep but other times he has to get up and go into the closet and get the box. He doesn't do it much, just once in a while when the sleep's not coming and his brain won't shut off. He thinks too much and thinking ain't never done nobody any good, but he thinks and thinks and takes out the postcards and reads them, one by one, in order. It's a little like looking at a picture book of his own life, like the ones he used to read to Junior and Francine, except this one ain't got the happy ending.

And that is a day in the life of Ennis Del Mar.

--

Ennis moved in with Junior and Curt after the last ranch went belly up. It's a temporary thing, he keeps saying, because he's just looking for the right thing to do next. There's not much ranch work but something's bound to come up soon. He's just spending a little time with one of his little girls (Francine, still living with her momma, comes to visit once in a while when it suits her) before he goes off again.

"Anythin good?" asks Junior one morning in January, rubbing her belly and getting cracker crumbs everywhere. She moves behind him, peering over his shoulder at the newspaper in his hands. "Or more a the same?"

Ennis grunts. "Same," he says, shuffling the paper and turning the page to the obituaries. "They done executed that Bundy fella down in Florida. Electric chair. Fried him up good." He twists, grins and jabs a finger in Junior's side, makes a buzzing sound.

"Daddy!" Junior tries not to smile. "Awful."

He grins at her and turns back to his newspaper. Halfway down page B5 his grin fades and his jaw sets. He grunts softly.

"Daddy?" asks Junior.

Ennis doesn't answer. He's reading the obituary of John C. Twist, 72, of Lightning Flat.

Junior puts a hand on his shoulder. "Someone you know?" she asks.

"Yeah," says Ennis. His voice is rougher than he thinks it ought to be, over the death of a man he probably hated. "Friend- A friend's daddy."

"Oh." Junior sighs. "I'm sorry."

Ennis stands. "I got to go up there," he tells her. He folds up the paper and sets it on the table, and picks up his coffee cup for the last swallow in it. "Got to see his momma. Make sure she's all right."

Junior nods. "Yeah, all right. Want me to make you somethin? I could pack you a lunch."

"Don't worry none, little darlin. I'll get somethin on the way." He kisses her cheek and goes to get his hat and his coat.

Lightning Flat is still a lonesome place but there's some life around it. Strip malls have replaced the abandoned ranches, and the highway's been widened and paved. Ennis doesn't turn on the radio while he drives, and he keeps the window down even though it's ball-busting cold. He doesn't stop to eat; he's not hungry at all.

When he gets there he's surprised that there's no other cars in the driveway. Nobody else here to pay their respects. John C. Twist had no funeral, the paper had said, and there wasn't a service. Ennis suspects there ain't no money for it, or what money there was got spent on keeping the dead ranch going. The stock's long gone, sold off one by one until the only thing left was a broken old mare Jack's momma said she couldn't part with for some reason. But that mare's gone too now, and Ennis knocks on the door expecting no answer until the door opens.

"Ennis," says Jack's momma. "Didn't know you was comin. Come in."

"Ma'am." Ennis takes off his hat and ducks into the house. "I came as soon as I saw it in the papers. I'm awful sorry."

Jack's momma smiles. "Sit down and let me get you some coffee. Piece a cake?"

It's like every time he comes to visit, like the first time and all the times after it. "No ma'am. Coffee's fine." He sits at the table. "I came to see how you was doin."

"Oh I'm fine." Jack's momma moves around the kitchen like a cloud moves when it's deciding whether or not to rain, slow and round. She brings him coffee in a chipped cup, and he drinks it. "I'm just fine, Ennis."

Ennis nods, and drinks. She sits down across from him, her hands - dirty, like she been grubbing in the garden they don't have - folded prayer-like in front of her on the table.

"John went in his sleep," she says. "Just like that. It was nice and peaceful for him." Her eyes sparkle. "He's in the family plot a course, didn't want to be put nowhere else. We put him next to Jack."

The name makes Ennis swallow too much coffee at once and he coughs. He doesn't ask who she means by we; he knows there ain't no one else now but her. "I would a come sooner," he says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "If there's anything you need, ma'am-"

She smiles suddenly, the first real smile he's ever seen on her. "There is somethin," she says, and there's a sound to her voice that makes Ennis sit up straight, and he notices that her hands are dirty. He looks at her and then looks around the kitchen. There's a shovel by the door, and muddy boots next to it.

"Ma'am?" he says.

Jack's momma gets up and goes into another room. When she comes back she's got in her hands a metal box. Ennis gets up so fast from the table that he knocks over the chair, and he swallows hard.

"I can't-"

"Please," she says, holding the box out to him with her old, filthy, shaking hands. It's rusted a bit, and there's dirt all over it. He don't want to touch it. "He don't want to be there in that plot. You know that. You said you'd take him up to Brokeback and you got to do it, Ennis."

Ennis shakes his head. "Ma'am, I can't. "

Jack's momma stares hard at him. "You take him Ennis Del Mar and you put him where he belong."

He bites at his lower lip, tearing at the skin until he tastes blood. The coffee in his belly turns and he's afraid he's going to puke, but he swallows it down and reaches out to take the box. It's cold. "Ma'am..."

She shakes her head. "You're a good boy. Jack was a good boy too." She looks away at something Ennis can't see. "He never did his daddy proud but I don't know that there was anything he could have done. His daddy."

He doesn't know what else she means to say because she goes to the door and opens it. "Go on now," she says. "Git going. You got a long way to go."

Ennis nods. He tucks the box under one arm and puts on his hat. "I'll come back soon."

"I'll probably be gone afore you do," she says, and she stands on her toes and pecks his cheek with dry lips. He can feel the little white hairs on her chin scrape against his skin.

When he's in the truck he puts the box on the seat beside him and rests his forehead against the steering wheel. He breathes in and out and for a moment the coffee starts up again, and he leans out the window expecting to puke but it doesn't come. He starts the engine and backs out onto the road and drives off, and somewhere inside him he knows he ain't never going to come back here to Lightning Flat again.

Before he gets to the highway he stops and goes into the county cemetery. John C. Twist's grave is easy to find because it's the newest one, fresh dug and still brown. Next to it is another hole, filled in clumsy with bits of grass and such sticking out. He hopes Jack's momma don't get into any trouble for what she done. He reads the stone over it - _Jack Twist 1944-1983_ - and quickly looks away to the one next to it, hands jammed in his pockets.

"You're a right son a bitch you know that?" he tells it quietly. "You ain't never give him no credit for it but he tried. He never could live up to what you expected. Nobody but Jesus Christ hisself probably could a made you proud." He looks around quick before he spits big on the fresh grave, turns and walks back to his truck.

He calls Junior from a gas station pay phone and tells her he'd be a couple days. She makes some noises about him missing out on dinner and he feels bad, he wants to tell her what he's doing and where he's going but all that comes out is, "it's just somethin I got to do, little darlin. I'll be back. Don't you worry none."

It pains him lying to his little girl but she is all that he has in this world, all he has left of anything that ever added up to love, Junior and her sister, and he don't want to mess that up. There's no sense in ruining the good life she keeps for him, and truth be told he has nowhere else to go. She don't need to know that about her daddy anyway. No little girl wants her daddy to be something they ain't supposed to be.

He gets in his truck and drives the two days it takes him to get from here to there.

--

The last time he'd been on Brokeback had been the first time. He never came back with or without Jack. In the years gone it's changed some, houses going up where there'd been sheep pasture before and a couple of new campgrounds and an expensive-looking resort overlooking one of the lower lakes. He drives till he can't drive no more then gets out and walks, wishing he still had his horse, and it's damn cold and getting colder the higher he goes and the box is bulky and hard to hold on to but he don't dare drop it. He don't dare.

Eventually he gets up to the place he met the fella who brought supplies every Friday at noon. He doesn't think he can get all the way up on foot and he ain't got no rifle, and he remembers the bears up here. It'll have to do.

Ennis finds a place near the creek that if you stood up on the rocks a bit, you could see up the mountain a good ways. He sets the box on the ground in the snow and sits across from it on a log. For a long while he just looks at it, ignoring the cold seeping through his jeans and biting at his ass and feet. It's hard to believe that what's left of Jack Twist is in this beat up, rusted old box. He doesn't like to think that.

"Friend," he says, and his voice is so rough that he coughs and tries to clear it before he tries again. "Friend, I hope you goddamn appreciate what I'm tryin to do for you right now." He sniffs and wipes his nose on his sleeve. "It's fuckin cold up here and I ain't dressed for it, I tell you what. I didn't go to your momma's house thinkin I was goin to be comin back here two days later. So you better appreciate it, you son a bitch. You better appreciate."

He can't talk for a moment and he wishes he had some whiskey. Might take the edge off the cold some, and make everything else a lot easier too. "Thing is," he says. "Thing is I wanted to come back here. Never said nothin to you cause I know you, Jack. I know if I ever told you I wanted to come back here you'd pack up and tell me to get in the truck 'cause we're goin right now. You never had much sense in you, boy. You never had no sense and that's what got you the tire-iron. I don't believe nothin about no accident. They gave you the tire-iron and they gave it to you good."

Ennis spits into the bushes. "Goddamn it, Jack. Why didn't you keep your fool mouth shut!" He pauses, because his voice seems too loud in the silence of the mountain, and he listens to the snap of the trees and the bubble of the creek. After a moment he's satisfied that there ain't no one else but the mountain itself around to hear him. "You can't go around- It wasn't sposed to be like this! We was supposed to come back here together - and I spose we did - but not like this." He starts to laugh, an awful broken sound to his own ears, and it's not a happy laugh because his eyes are burning. "Not like this, Jack Twist. You in a box and me freezing my fuckin balls off out here, no horse, no gun and no goddamn whiskey!"

He gets up quick and makes like he's going to kick the box, right into the creek, but he stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. His fingers come away wet. "Goddamn it, Jack. Goddamn." Ennis swallows hard, over and over, and wishes he could just puke and get it over with.

Eventually, he picks up the box and uses his knife to pry it open. It's not what he expects inside. He doesn't know what he expects exactly, but the white dust isn't what he thought it'd look like. It's tempting to reach in and sift his hand through it, touching Jack again but it wouldn't be like that, he knows. It'd be like sticking his hand in a long-gone campfire and nothing at all like Jack Twist's skin.

"Best I can do, friend," he says, standing up with the open box and stepping up to the half-frozen creek. "It ain't no little ranch or nothin but it's all I got to give you right now, and I can't take you home 'cause it ain't my home, it's Junior's home and she don't need no more ghosts. She got one too many as it is." He tips the box forward and watches the white dusty cascade, watches it settle on the surface of the water before it's carried away, churned up and sent along ahead. He throws the box in for good measure, so there's no part of Jack that gets left behind. The stream takes it down quick.

He stares into the water for a long time.

"Just wait here," Ennis says softly. He runs a hand through his greying hair. "I know you hate waitin but you always did anyway. You just wait here and I'll be back. Don't know when, but I'll be back." He swallows. "I'll find you."

He leaves before the sun sets, to get off the mountain and down to the truck before dark. He drives back to Ten Sleep to find Junior waiting for him, with a warm plate and a smile.

"Junior," he says, when he sees her. "You know I'm proud of you right?"

She blinks at him. "Daddy?"

"Just- You make me so goddamn proud. You're a good girl. Smart." He smells the plate of food. "Good cook."

"Daddy, you all right?"

Ennis sighs, and nods. "Yeah, little darlin." He takes a bite of chicken. "Yeah. I'm all right. Just thought I'd tell you. Case I hadn't afore."

Junior smiles, and wraps her arms around him from behind. "Glad you're home, Daddy."

"Yeah," says Ennis, though he thinks maybe this ain't quite his home and it ain't never going to be, but it's a good enough place to be till he gets there.

-fin-


End file.
